


That’s the thing about love

by eddieklives



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Eddie Kaspbrak Loves Richie Tozier, First Time, Fix-It, Fluff, Love Confessions, M/M, Post-Canon, Referenced Masturbation, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, and eddie will give him his heart and to richie that is all he needs, andy muschietti can fight me, because they deserve it, i am unhinged, i love them more than i love myself, it's about sex BUT it's fluffy, it's just soft and sweet and love, richie deserves the fucking world, richie finally understands what making love means, they have suffered enough, this is a personal "fuck you" to canon, this isn't graphic at all hence the rating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:20:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26942047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eddieklives/pseuds/eddieklives
Summary: Richie didn't know sex could be so gentle and slow and sweet. It had always been just something he did to get off.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak & Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 11
Kudos: 168





	That’s the thing about love

**Author's Note:**

> This isn't tagged M, because the sexual content is very soft and gentle.  
> The f-slur appears once.  
> I love you all.

It had never felt right. He guessed it had to be _his_ problem, something wrong with _him_. Everyone loved sex. Everything all the time was about sex. Not even perfume ads were off limits. Still, it had never felt…worth it.

In college, he assumed he was just not good at it. He had gotten the mechanics correct; he knew where things were supposed to go. He learned everything from porn, not that he had much of a choice. A closeted gay kid from fucking Maine, no less; the closest he had gotten to sex as a teenager had been jerking off in the shower, while Eddie waited for him in his room. So, he blamed it on himself. ‘You are just not good at this, dude. That’s why it doesn’t feel right.’

He heard the expression “making love” often and it _baffled_ him. **Love?** There was nothing about sex that translated to love to him. It was either always violent or straight up sad.

As he grew older, now in Los Angeles, but still just a closeted gay teen at heart, one who had never moved on from the child crush on his best friend, he came to terms with the fact that sex, maybe, was just _not_ supposed to be romantic or feel fulfilling in any way. It was something he did to get off, rarely and drunk, and everything about the act was mechanized. Get in, cum, get out.

He stopped watching gay porn all together at around thirty-four or thirty-five years old. His own experience with sex just exacerbated the whole ‘this is staged, they are actors’ side of it, never failing to kill his boner immediately. They seemed too into it, for people who were just shoving their bits together.

Getting off felt good, sure. Having someone make him orgasm, once in a while, instead of him repeating the sad ritual of jerking off onto his hand, getting annoyed at himself for having to fucking clean it, deciding to only masturbate in the shower, forgetting it a couple months later, cumming on his sheets again, having to wash them and change them, going back to only touching himself in the shower. So, yes, sometimes he would go out, get very drunk, bring someone to his apartment who would not remember his name the next day (not that he would know theirs either), have mediocre sex at best, violent at worst, and they would hopefully leave immediately after and not want to stay the night with him.

That was something that irritated him about movies. The moment after sex. Post-coital glow? Bullshit. Cuddling? Not a damn chance. Even if he wanted to, he doubted the type of men he was bringing home would. They were usually pretty fucking quick, both at cumming _and_ at getting out of his apartment, and even drunker than he was. Richie didn’t care, he wasn’t expecting for the love of his life to turn out to be one of his nightstands. If only life was a romantic comedy…

Well, when Eddie was standing right in front of him for the first time in over twenty years, it sure as hell seemed like a romantic comedy, and judging from the way they had left things after Derry, it was not going to be a happy ending.

Richie was a mess he knew that. He also knew he couldn’t expect Eddie to suddenly come and sweep him off his feet and save him from the tallest tower in the kingdom, a tower he had locked himself in when he realized his feelings would never be reciprocated, when he realized he was different. ‘Fag’ still burned on the side of his ribs every time he remembered growing up in that fucking town. He had cut the word onto his skin when he was fourteen and even though it had faded beyond noticeable, he knew it had been there, a few layers of epidermis back.

Imagine, dear reader, Richie’s surprise when, one day, Eddie called to tell him he was in town. Imagine his surprise when they had dinner and Eddie seemed to keep trying to tell him something but backing away last minute. – Eddie thought he was a subtle person. Everyone who knew Eddie or had ever met him for two minutes knew that subtle was the exact opposite of what he was. – Imagine Richie’s surprise when Eddie kept making excuses to hang out, when he told him he should just rent an apartment, because the hotel was getting expensive, when Eddie finally said ‘I divorced Myra. I didn’t want to tell you before it was finalized. I signed the papers before I flew here, and she finally signed hers. So, _that’s_ over.’

The emphasis he had so clearly put into ‘ _that’s over_ ’ sent Richie’s heart into overdrive for a few minutes afterwards, but Richie decided it meant nothing. Eddie didn’t mean anything by that.

Richie did end up offering the spare bedroom to Eddie, because of course he did. How could he not? He wasn’t going to find an apartment anytime soon and it was winter and almost Christmas and rents were tough and… Richie ran out of excuses. He just wanted Eddie around. All the time in fact.

Eddie was a force of nature even as an adult. Maybe more so than he had been as a kid. When he put his mind into something, God…there was no stopping him. Richie admired from a safe distance, missing things he had never even done. He missed Eddie’s kisses every time Eddie licked his lips, or every time he tasted something Richie was cooking (he demanded to supervise the amount of salt Richie was putting in his food), even though they had never kissed. He missed Eddie’s hot breath on his neck, even though they had never been that close. Every time Eddie brushed past him in the kitchen to reach something while Richie was teaching him another recipe, Richie felt his heart beating in his throat, so close to his mouth, so close to screaming ‘I am yours, Eddie.’ itself, because Richie couldn’t seem to bring himself to.

Eddie seemed happy and comfortable and _free_ and, fuck, Richie almost found himself forgetting that this wasn’t a movie, but real life, and this wouldn’t last forever. Fucking romantic comedies…

Now, reader, Eddie had always been braver than he thought, and sometimes Eddie’s bravery terrified Richie.

Yet, this one moment, this one small moment of bravery from Eddie, it didn’t scare Richie. One second they were stumbling into Richie’s home, laughing and pushing each other, soaking wet from the first rain of the winter season; the next second, Eddie was swallowing dry, and in one movement, one small, quick, subtle movement, his arms were around Richie and their lips were touching.

Richie stood paralyzed, his lips kissing Eddie’s back softly. Slowly, Richie’s arms unlocked from his sides, afraid Eddie would slip away like in a dream, and wrapped around the smaller man’s body. Eddie broke the kiss to find Richie’s eyes still closed.

“Rich-”

“Shh… I don’t wanna open them and wake up.”

“Richie.” His voice was warm and soft.

Richie’s eyes opened so slowly, Eddie thought he was waking from a dream. In Richie’s mind, that’s exactly what he was doing.

The soft blue of the taller man’s eyes met the rich brown of the other. Eddie held Richie’s face in his hands and softly caressed his jaw with his thumbs. “You’re… heart-breaking, Rich.”

“I love you…” The words came out in a desperate whisper, a call for help from a drowning man, a plea. ‘Sweep me off my feet and take me away from this tower.’, he thought.

“I hope so, because if I’m alone in this it’s really gonna suck.” He chuckled, looking into the other’s eyes.

“Alone in what?”

“Being in love with my best friend.”

Richie chuckled, and then, all at once, it hit him. The tears ran down, like a tap had been open. Or a door. Or a dam. Eddie didn’t run away. He held him, he walked him to the couch, he made him tea, he kissed his temples and played with his hair.

The word on his ribs burned. ‘Love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love.’ To Richie, this wasn’t a phrase of pride, but a prayer.

A couple of months passed. Two months of stolen kisses under the sheets, freshly baked cookies as a surprise snack, congratulations from their friends, a phone call with his father who told him he had always known (and he would always love him), a Christmas card from his nieces who drew him (“uncle Richie”) and next to him a smaller man (“uncle Eddie”). Two months of no more apologising to himself for being gay, two months of no more alcohol, two months of sleeping next to the one person he had ever wanted to sleep next to.

They didn’t have sex because Richie didn’t call it that. “Calling it sex would be comparing it to whatever I was doing before.” For similar reasons, Eddie who had only ever had what could only be described as “clinically precise intercourse” with one person in his life, agreed that sex was not their word.

They made love. Turns out it is a thing, reader! It is very much appropriate Richie would like to say.

The first time it had happened, Richie had been a wreck, before, during and after. He had had to guide Eddie through it, since Eddie had never actually been with someone that owned a penis, before. They very quickly agreed that Eddie was ‘not going to be doing anal right away, thank you very much.’

So, Richie removed Eddie’s pants slowly, and like a need from deep within him, he kissed up Eddie’s legs and stomach. He kissed the scar on his chest and ran his fingers slowly on top of it, tracing its edges. Eddie confessed in that moment that Myra had told him the scar was horrifying to look at both times they had attempted (and failed) to have sex, which lit up a fire inside Richie that made him want to dedicate his entire life to telling Eddie how every single thing about his body, from his cute little freckles, to the scar on his face, to the scar on his chest, was beautiful and proof that Eddie had survived some of the worst things anyone should have to face and came out on top.

They removed each other’s clothes as if they were performing poetry, or a beautifully improvised dance. They kissed each other’s skin, and ran their hands through the other’s body, in awe, in love, in desire, in ‘I want to be with you forever, I wanted to be with you when I didn’t remember’. Richie didn't know it could be so gentle and slow and sweet…

He started crying at one point and, after much reassurance, Eddie believed him when he said they were happy tears. They kissed and they grinded on each other and hid their smiles and moans of pleasure from the other, burying their faces in one another’s necks, holding on to each other, with their legs wrapped together and their foreheads sweating and words of love slipping out from the tip of their tongues.

It felt so right, God, it felt so right. It felt natural and Eddie… Eddie touched him like he actually wanted to be there. Eddie called his name in short breaths as he grinded against him and Richie’s hands were on his body, on his back, slowly tracing his spine and sending shivers down it that teamed up with the butterflies in his stomach. Richie kissed Eddie’s neck and felt him melt on top of him, so he did it again, and again, and again.

Richie probably said “I love you” over a hundred times in the span of the fifteen minutes it took for both to climax. When they did, they stayed wrapped in each other’s arms, naked, sweaty, their skins burning hot and a set of bed sheets ruined. When Richie opened his eyes (he would still sometimes fear he was dreaming) he found Eddie tracing the side of his body with his hand, passing right over where the word had been carved. It didn’t burn, and it never would burn again.

They locked eyes and Richie could finally say it. The glow was real. But then again, Richie had to admit, Eddie always glowed to him. He was the sun and the stars. He was this galaxy and the ten galaxies over. To him, Eddie shone brighter than any star.

He finally understood the meaning of making love and he didn’t think he would ever get tired of it. Sure, him and Eddie would eventually want to try different things and have fun, but for now, Richie was more than happy with just watching Eddie writhe on top of him, whispering his name and never letting their kisses part for more than two minutes. Richie wanted to get to know Eddie’s body inch by inch.

It finally felt right.

**Author's Note:**

> I just wonder about Richie's emotions a lot and then this happens.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this! Feel free to read my other work and please comment, because I love feedback.
> 
> Twitter: @PJRANS0NE


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